Chương 285: 285：Crashing the Party

Alaric's original plan was to use the banquet as cover, slip into the study, memorize the troop deployment and supply cache locations, and silently exfiltrate to bring the intel back to Greywater Village. However, from across the hall, Soren caught the slight urgency in Alaric's eyes. Instantly reading the Imperial Knight's intentions, Soren shook his head inwardly.

"Steal ledgers? Gather intel? The scope is too narrow, the efficiency too pathetic." Soren lowered his eyes, a lethal, calculated killing intent rising in his chest.

"The absolute core of warfare is destroying the enemy's organizational cohesion!" He rapidly ran a completely different tactical simulation in his mind: "Intel is static. As long as their command structure exists, they can change routes and requisition new supplies at will."

"But... what if I execute Overlord Nak, every senior Orc officer, and every human logistical capo in this room right here, right now?" Soren's gaze slowly swept over the bloated merchants and muscular officers.

"Without their leaders, the chain of command shatters. This fortress will instantly devolve into a chaotic, headless mob."

"Without these human traitors to suppress and extort them, the bottom-tier laborers will undoubtedly riot."

"This won't just paralyze Abysswater Keep... it will fundamentally sever the logistical lifeline of Warchief Blackstone's thirty-thousand-strong army at the source!"

"Physically eliminating the enemy's supreme logistical commanders yields an astronomically higher strategic devastation than stealing a few pieces of scrap paper!" His resolve for a decapitation strike firmly cemented, Soren chewed his meat even faster to stockpile energy. Just then, the raucous toasting in the hall hit a brief lull. Nak had just finished his lengthy, arrogant speech and was raising his golden goblet to wet his throat.

In that dead silence, a crisp, violently loud CRACK echoed from the corner of the hall. It was the sound of Lyra forcefully snapping a massive cow femur in half with her bare hands just to suck out the marrow. In a banquet hall entirely dedicated to sycophantic groveling and fake etiquette, this brazen, unapologetic crunching of bone was jarringly loud. Nak froze, his goblet hovering in mid-air. His murky yellow eyes snapped viciously toward the noise.

Seeing two lowly grunts in slave-auxiliary leather armor not even sparing him a glance—frantically shoveling food into their mouths and spitting bone fragments all over the table—the Orc Overlord felt his meticulously crafted majesty had been severely challenged. Roaring in fury, Nak violently smashed his golden goblet into the ground, sending wine splattering everywhere. He took heavy, aggressive strides off his dais, marching across the red carpet.

"You two pieces of filth over there!" Nak unleashed a deafening, earth-shaking roar. The hall instantly fell dead silent, the human traitors paralyzed with terror, not daring to make a sound.

"Which slave battalion do you dogs belong to?! Who gave you permission to gnaw on bones in such a noble setting?! Raise your heads and answer me!" Faced with a violently enraged Black Iron Orc Overlord, the surrounding slave soldiers scrambled backward in sheer terror, desperate to avoid the crossfire. Soren, however, didn't display a single ounce of panic. With absolute, chilling composure, he swallowed the last chunk of mutton and casually tossed the bare bone onto his silver platter.

Under the terrified, bewildered, and doomed gazes of hundreds of people... Soren stood up with slow, deliberate precision. His spine, previously hunched in the guise of a lowly subordinate, violently snapped straight. The majestic, suffocating aura of an apex commander forged in the crucible of endless slaughter completely erupted! He didn't use the crude Orcish tongue. Instead, speaking in flawless, unaccented Human Common, he delivered his answer for the entire hall to hear.

"You ask who I am?" Soren tilted his chin up, articulating every syllable with lethal clarity.

"I am the Vice-Commander of the Silvermoon Kingdom's Crimson Moon Knights."

"Lord of Greywater Village in the Misty Swamp."

"Soren." BOOM! Those two syllables struck the human traitors like an apocalyptic thunderbolt! Thanks to Lucia's recently published exclusive interview, who on the continent didn't know that the human warlord who slaughtered the Oracle and Young Master Mogg at Soul-Severing Gorge was named Soren?!

"So... Soren?! That monster!" Several wealthy human merchants felt their legs turn to jelly, collapsing directly onto their rear ends as their wine glasses shattered on the floor. Though the Orc officers didn't understand Human Common, the sheer, paralyzing terror painted across the humans' faces instantly alerted them to the lethal danger. Without a single wasted breath, perfectly synchronized with his declaration, Soren's tactical maneuvers flawlessly engaged.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He violently ripped the dirty rags from his back, revealing the elven masterpiece radiating a deep cyan glow—the [Windwhisper Bow]—now gripped firmly in his hand. At the exact same microsecond, Lyra leaped up with phantom-like agility. Her boots lightly tapped the tabletop as she launched herself into the air.

Between the fingers of both hands, cold steel gleamed—dozens of throwing knives already locked onto targets across the room, her silver eyes radiating pure, icy killing intent.

"Enemy attack! Kill him!" Nak was the first to react. Unleashing a rabid roar, his hand shot to the heavy machete at his waist. Right at this critical precipice...

"The Royal Griffin Knights of the Empire stand here! Move and you die!" From behind a massive pillar on the opposite side of the hall, Alaric unleashed a majestic, authoritative roar. Since Soren had revealed his identity and chosen a frontal assault, as an ally, the Imperial Duke's son didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. Alaric and his personal guard violently tore off their disguised cloaks, revealing the brilliantly glowing enchanted knight's breastplates beneath.

Moving in perfect, drilled unison, the two raised repeating hand crossbows with their left hands while their right hands drew broad knight's longswords with a resounding SCHING, instantly locking down the hall's side doors. The apex warlord of Greywater Village and the elites of the Royal Griffin Knights. A mere four people, using sheer, suffocating martial presence, had completely paralyzed and seized control of a hall swarming with enemies!

"Die!" Soren's eyes flared with an abyssal glow. [Eagle Eye Perception] fully activated! Under his transcendent dynamic vision, the surrounding Orc officers lunging toward him seemed to move at a laughably sluggish crawl. Soren's left arm locked forward, his right arm flexing. Driven by the monstrous, terrifying kinetic output of his [Faint Titan Bloodline], he instantly drew the longbow to its absolute breaking point! TWANG! The bowstring shuddered, emitting a high-pitched, ear-piercing shriek.

The wind runes on the bow's limbs flared violently, and cyan wind mana spiraled into visible, violently rotating vortexes around the arrows. SWISH! SWISH! Two rapid-fire arrows, flying nose-to-tail, tore through the air at blistering speed! Nak had barely drawn his heavy machete halfway. In his murky eyes, all he saw were two rapidly expanding dots of cyan light. SQUELCH! The first armor-piercing heavy arrow, wreathed in violent wind pressure, flawlessly penetrated Nak's right eye.

Its staggering kinetic force pulverized his optic nerve and violently shattered the front of his skull! Less than a tenth of a second later, the second arrow punched perfectly into the exact same bloody crater expanded by the first! Carrying even more tyrannical, apocalyptic momentum, it completely liquefied Nak's brain.

A grotesque fountain of red blood and white brain matter erupted from the back of his skull as the arrow exited, carrying enough residual kinetic force to punch clean through a wooden pillar behind him! THUD. Nak, the Overlord of Abysswater Keep and Warchief Blackstone's paramount logistical commander, didn't even have the chance to utter a single scream. His colossal body lost all tension, crashing heavily onto the red carpet. Killed instantly. Time in the hall seemingly ground to a halt.

Capitalizing on the microscopic window where the enemy was completely paralyzed by the horrifying one-shot execution, Soren's hand blurred to his quiver, nocking a fresh arrow while barking rapid-fire orders across the hall:"Alaric! No survivors! Kill every last one of them!"

"With Nak dead, these Orc officers and human capos are the absolute last nodes keeping this fortress operational! Slaughter them all, and Abysswater Keep's logistical network suffers total paralysis! That thirty-thousand-strong Orc army will starve to death in the mud of the Misty Swamp!" Hearing Soren's brutally direct tactical dissection, Alaric froze for a fraction of a second. Then, a look of profound, absolute realization washed over the Imperial Knight's face.

He had originally feared that instigating a bloodbath deep inside the enemy camp would draw a fatal encirclement. But compared to the apocalyptic strategic yield of paralyzing a thirty-thousand-strong army... no risk was too great!

"May the Empire's glory never fade! Slaughter them!" Alaric instantly discarded his narrow espionage mindset, decisively issuing the kill order. In a heartbeat, the two commanders reached absolute consensus: Every single enemy in this hall, Orc or human traitor, would die tonight!

"Protect the officers! Hack these human scum to pieces!" Over a dozen Black Iron Orc officers finally snapped out of their shock, unleashing rabid, frantic roars. Relying on their monstrous physiques, they hoisted heavy axes and spiked maces, launching a savage, thunderous charge directly at Soren's position!